


i grew up, you grew down

by spaceburgers



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25895068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceburgers/pseuds/spaceburgers
Summary: Three months after the 2024 Summer Olympics, Oikawa Tooru retires from volleyball, moves back to Japan, and immediately disappears from the public eye. Or, how Tooru gets his groove back.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 79
Kudos: 679





	1. Part I: Tokyo

**Author's Note:**

> please note that this fic includes customized html formatting that might not display well on all devices. to turn it off, just click on the "hide creator's style" button right at the top of the page. best viewed on a computer.

5 things you didn’t know about Oikawa Tooru

By Ozaki Kana  
August 9, 2021

Volleyball player Oikawa Tooru, 27, burst onto the international stage during the recent Olympics as Team Argentina’s setter. Despite being previously unknown, having never played at Nationals during his years in high school, he quickly became somewhat of a national sensation after his match against Team Japan last Friday. Who is Oikawa Tooru? How did he end up playing for Argentina? Read below to find out more from our exclusive interview with the man himself!

**Interviewer: How are you feeling after your last match?**

**Oikawa:** Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t upset that we lost against Japan. I’ve been training for many years for this showdown, and it’s disappointing to still have lost out to them in the end. Still, it was a close fight, and I had a lot of fun playing against some familiar faces from my past. I think at the end of the day that’s the most important part—that I got to have fun.

**I: One thing many fans noticed is that you seem to be friends with some of the players on Team Japan.**

**O:** Yes, I’m pretty good friends with [Hinata] Shouyo, and I’ve faced down a few of them during my time playing volleyball in high school. It was great to be able to play against all of them again.

**I: What would you like to say to the members of Team Japan?**

**O:** Argentina might have lost this time, but I promise I’ll get my revenge in 2024.

**I: As someone who was born and raised in Japan, how did you end up playing for Team Argentina?**

**O:** It’s kind of a long story. The gist of it is that I went to Argentina to learn from Coach José Blanco, who was coaching CA San Juan at the time. I’d watched him play once when I was in elementary school, and I was fortunate enough to have met him again in high school. His advice changed my life. I don’t have any regrets about moving away from home, although of course I still get homesick from time to time.

**I: What’s something you miss about living in Japan?**

**O:** Japanese milk bread. You can’t find bread like that anywhere in Argentina.

**I: You’ve become quite popular on Japanese social media recently. What are some things your new fans might not know about you?**

**O:** (Laughs) That’s quite a difficult question. Let’s see. Well, I grew up in a small town just outside of Sendai, for starters. One of the athletic trainers for Team Japan, Iwa-cha—I mean, Iwaizumi, is actually a childhood friend of mine. We grew up right next door to each other, and we played volleyball together for years and years. Ah, what else… I have a nephew named Takeru who’s trying to become a pro volleyball player too. I’ve recently been watching old romance dramas from when I was a kid in my free time. Oh, and my star sign is Cancer.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW

* * *

Argentina beats Japan to clinch Olympic gold in men’s volleyball

By Jason P. Rosenberg  
August 11, 2024

For the first time in history, Argentina has clinched an Olympic gold medal in men’s volleyball, narrowly beating out Japan 3-2 in the finals.

The clear standout from the team was setter Tooru Oikawa, 30, who emigrated to Argentina from Japan at the age of 19 to play in the Argentine Volleyball League. Oikawa previously represented Argentina during the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo as well.

“Tooru possesses the extraordinary ability to attune himself to every

single member of his team instinctively,” said Pedro Juarez, head coach of the Argentina men’s national volleyball team, in a post-match interview. “That’s not a skill you can teach. It’s honed through years of hard work.”

Oikawa added during a separate interview, “I’m thankful for all the support I’ve received over the past ten years. It’s been an honor to represent Argentina.”

* * *

SURPRISE ANNOUNCEMENT! Volleyball star Tooru Oikawa announces retirement!

By María Fernández  
September 23, 2024

In a surprise announcement posted to his social media accounts, Olympic athlete Tooru Oikawa announced yesterday that he’s officially retiring from volleyball for good. Oikawa, who recently turned 30, moved to Argentina when he was just 19 years old. Last month, he helped clinch a gold medal in men’s volleyball in the recent Paris Olympics. His statement reads:

> I’ve spent the last ten years of my life living in Argentina. I will always be immensely grateful for all the opportunities I’ve been given in this beautiful country, and for how accepting and supportive everyone has been throughout my career. It’s a blessing and an honor to have won a gold medal for the country that has become my second home.
> 
> However, I feel that it is time to close this chapter of my life, and to help pave the way for other talented young athletes instead.

> I don’t know yet what I’ll be doing after my retirement, but what I do know for sure is that I’ll always continue to love volleyball, and to continue supporting volleyball in Argentina for the rest of my life. Thank you for everything.

Just minutes after this statement was posted, social media instantly exploded with rumors and speculation about what next steps Oikawa might be taking. An anonymous source close to Oikawa himself claims that he’s planning on switching to league management – perhaps with CA San Juan, the professional volleyball team that Oikawa himself hails from? There’s also speculation that a brand partnership is on the horizon, although whether that will actually happen remains to be seen. Keep checking back on this site for updates as this story develops!

* * *

Olympic volleyball player Tooru Oikawa renounces Argentinian citizenship, plans on moving back to Japan

By Matías González  
January 5, 2025

Professional volleyball player, Tooru Oikawa, who was part of the men’s volleyball team that recently won a gold medal in last year’s Summer Olympics, has announced via a social media post that he will be renouncing his Argentinian citizenship and moving back to his home country of Japan.

Oikawa moved to Argentina in 2013 at the age of 19. He became a naturalized Argentinian citizen in 2019, which allowed him to compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as a representative of Argentina.

The announcement has sparked debate about the practice of fast-tracking migrant athletes to full citizenship in order to allow them to compete in international sports tournaments. Dr. Sofia Muñoz, a political scientist who studies immigration policy at the University of Buenos Aires, said, “This is a fairly common practice throughout the

world, especially in countries with relatively small populations. Opponents like to paint these migrant athletes, like Mr. Oikawa, as ‘freeloaders’ of sorts, who come into the country, gain substantial funding and recognition, and then leave once they retire from sports.

"Ultimately, it comes down to a question of patriotism: what does it mean to represent a country on the international stage? I would personally argue that Oikawa has done Argentina a great deal of service, and he was no small part of the reason why we finally have an Olympic gold medal in volleyball for the first time in history. I think that's a very important achievement that should be celebrated, regardless of what he might choose to do with his future."

READ MORE AT BATIMES.CO.AR

* * *

Where in the world is Oikawa Tooru?

By Fujita Ayoko  
June 11, 2025

It’s been six months since Oikawa Tooru was last spotted in public: he was last seen at Narita Airport, after his flight from Argentina, where he gave a brief interview about moving back to Japan after spending more than ten years away from home. He hasn’t made a single public appearance since, or even a post on any of his social media accounts.

Which begs the question: where did he go?

We’ve obtained an exclusive source close to Oikawa himself, who revealed not only where Oikawa is living now, but also hinted at a possible career comeback in the works…?

CLICK HERE TO READ ON!

* * *

“Shittykawa,” Iwa-chan says. “Stop reading articles about yourself.”

Tooru looks up to see Iwa-chan’s frowning face, the wrinkles between his brow and the downward tug to his lips so familiar by now that it doesn’t faze Tooru at all.

“I’m thirty years old, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, and ignores the way Iwa-chan’s standing behind the couch he’s currently sitting on and looming over him like some sort of serial killer. Instead he clicks on the link to the rest of this tabloid article, even though it’ll probably just end up giving him a virus. “I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

The website loads on Tooru’s laptop, and a giant ad for a porn website immediately fills the screen.

He looks up at Iwa-chan and regrets it instantly, because the way he’s looking back at Tooru with raised eyebrows says plainly _I told you so._

“I know,” Tooru sighs. “I _know_ , you don’t have to tell me.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Iwa-chan points out, because thirty years into their friendship and he’s still an incorrigible bastard. Tooru scowls, slamming his laptop screen shut.

“I’m going back to my room,” Tooru announces, wedging his laptop under one arm before pushing himself off the couch and marching away. He knows he’s acting like a ten-year-old right now, but in all fairness, it’s kind of hard to be properly mad in a mature, adult fashion when the person you’re mad at is your roommate and also neither of you like leaving the house all that much. There’s not a lot of room for dramatics there.

Or, well, to be more accurate—Iwa-chan doesn’t like leaving the house all that much. Tooru doesn’t leave the house unless he has to, period.

It’s been almost six months since Tooru came back to Japan and moved in with Iwa-chan. It had seemed like a good idea at the time: Iwa-chan was planning to move, too, because he hated his shitty studio apartment and wanted to find someplace else, and it made perfect sense for them to find a house together in Tokyo where Iwa-chan could get all the space he wanted and Tooru could have somewhere to stay in Japan that wasn’t his childhood home back in Miyagi. Iwa-chan had gone through the whole house hunting ordeal on his own, snapping photos and sending them to Tooru to look at when he woke up in the morning in Argentina, and eventually they settled on the house they have now, a cozy two-story home in a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, mostly populated by geriatric retirees. Two bedrooms, a quaint kitchen, a balcony where Tooru wanted to grow all the potted plants his heart desired, and a spare room where Iwa-chan wanted to set up a home gym. Then with the house all taken care of, all Tooru had to do was buy a one-way plane ticket back to Japan, make an obligatory post on social media announcing his departure, and then that was that. Easy and simple.

Except the day Tooru got to his new home, lugging his massive suitcases behind him, it was like something tipped out of balance inside of him. This house, where Iwa-chan had already made himself at home, that smelled like the same detergent Iwa-chan’s mom used to use and had all of Iwa-chan’s things strewn all over the place—Tooru has no idea what the problem was, really. Maybe it was the desire to claim the space for his own, to plant his roots down until he finally felt like it was fully his. Maybe it was something more fragile than that; maybe he took one look at this space that was so blindingly Iwa-chan that it hurt, and the tiny voice in the back of his head said, _I’m never going to leave again_.

Or maybe it had nothing to do with Iwa-chan at all. Maybe it was just the sheer realization that Tooru was back in Japan for the first time in over ten years, and he’d never play volleyball with his teammates in Argentina again, and at the ripe age of thirty Oikawa Tooru’s life was over.

In any case something shifted inside of him, that day. To this day he still can’t articulate it.

All Tooru knows is that the only things he did that first month he moved back to Japan was alternate between binge watching old telenovelas and reruns of Terrace House, and FaceTime his old teammates in Argentina while trying valiantly to pretend like he wasn’t going through an early midlife crisis, and cry because he was craving the empanadas from the bakery next to his old apartment in Buenos Aires so badly. Then Iwa-chan decided enough was enough and staged an intervention involving Makki, Mattsun, Shouyou, and—horribly, embarrassingly, _absolutely mortifyingly_ —Tobio-chan (whom Iwa-chan still insists he didn’t invite and was actually brought along by Shouyou, but Tooru refuses to believe that his precious Shouyou would betray him like this), where they all dragged him out to a dive bar that was so excruciatingly hipster that nobody there even batted an eyelid at Tooru, and got him drunk enough to finally admit that _okay, yes, maybe I’m going through a bit of a crisis right now_ , and then he woke up the next morning horizontal on his couch with one shoe still on and the other lying upside-down in the genkan.

After that something had to give, and so the second and third month since he moved back to Japan, Tooru became obsessed with the house. Iwa-chan had recently quit his job as an athletic trainer and started his own private practice as a physical therapist, so he was never home, and even when he was he was usually so tired that it took all his strength not to immediately shuffle to his bedroom and pass out on top of his sheets still fully dressed. So Tooru took it upon himself to be the gatherer to Iwa-chan’s alpha male hunter, and found his new life’s purpose in cleaning, and cooking, and trying out different empanada recipes online until he finally managed to sate his very specific cravings and made himself cry all over again from how good it tasted. He started actually leaving the house, mostly just to go to the grocery store on weekday afternoons when it would be mostly empty except for ancient old ladies who could barely make out the price tags on the items, much less recognize his face. He also finally fulfilled his dream of turning his balcony into a garden, and spent hours online ordering new furniture to replace the shitty cheap Ikea ones that Iwa-chan had gotten without his permission, and also bought a new ultra-strength vacuum cleaner he’d decided to name Ushiwaka out of sheer spite, because it sucked all the air right out of the room. Iwa-chan didn’t think the joke was that funny when Tooru told him, which was frankly very hurtful and insensitive.

Honestly, Tooru was actually pretty happy living out his domestic bliss, until Makki texted him one day and said, “Are you trying to be Iwaizumi’s housewife or something? Lol” and Tooru stared at the text with his face turning rapidly red because _was that what his friends thought of him?_ And more importantly, _was that what Iwa-chan thought of him too?_

So then he stopped obsessing over cooking and cleaning and rearranging their furniture and went back to just watching old seasons of Terrace House instead. Until one Friday night, when Iwa-chan came home exhausted, and said offhandedly, “Y’know, I kind of miss when you used to cook.”

And then because Tooru has been a sucker for Iwaizumi Hajime since the day he was born, he immediately went back to living out his greatest domestic fantasies, Makki and Mattsun’s opinions be damned.

The fourth month since he moved back to Japan, Tooru started venturing out of the house more often, mostly to visit other friends in the city. He still didn’t like going out in public—even though it’d been months, the memory of being harassed by what felt like a gazillion reporters and photographers at Narita Airport when he’d first landed back in Japan was still burned into his memory—but Mattsun had a strange knack for finding the most obscure bars and restaurants all around the city, despite the fact that he’d only just moved to Tokyo a year ago, after the funeral home he used to work at in Miyagi closed shop for good. Well, Tooru’s never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and he started making a habit of meeting up with friends on the weekends, which was nice, if only because Tooru was getting sick of eating his own cooking or getting takeout or, worse, having to deal with Iwa-chan’s low-sodium old man sensibilities whenever it was his turn in the kitchen.

The fifth month since he moved back to Japan, Tooru was in their home gym when he realized, with rapidly dawning horror, that Iwa-chan could actually lift more than him now even though one of them was a former Olympic athlete and the other was a freak who spent eleven hours a day at his job. This managed to successfully galvanize him into finally working out again. That was a pretty grueling month.

Which brings them to the present, six months since Tooru moved back to Japan, and his latest hobby is collecting online articles about himself and bookmarking them in a folder he’s aptly named ‘Oikawa-san’s Greatest Hits.’ Granted, there hasn’t been a lot about him in the news lately, and he has to admit that it is a disappointment that this latest article turned out to be a poorly-concealed scam. Maybe he should get Iwa-chan to sell information about him to some tabloid news site, and then Tooru can buy himself a new houseplant with the money. That’s what he’s thinking, at least, as he kicks his bedroom door shut behind him like a pre-pubescent teen trying his best to act out for attention. He tosses himself onto his bed and cracks open his laptop again. The latest article was a dud, but he pulls up an older one from his bookmarks folder instead: a blog post containing photos of him at the airport, looking fashionably rumpled and not at all like he’d just gotten off a plane after spending a combined total of 24 hours in the air. The Tooru in the photos is all smiles and peace signs, like he’s so fucking glad to be back home. What was that idiot so happy about? Tooru scowls at the photos, and then slams his laptop shut again.

All of this is somehow Iwa-chan’s fault, he decides. Tooru doesn’t know why yet, but he’ll figure it out eventually.

* * *

As with almost all of their arguments, Tooru’s completely forgotten why he was even mad in the first place by the time dinner rolls around. It's a Saturday, which means it’s Iwa-chan’s turn to cook, and when Tooru pushes his bedroom door open at 7PM it’s to the wonderful smell of something frying in the kitchen. He pads carefully into the kitchen, and there Iwa-chan is, standing in front of a pot of boiling oil, poking at bits of chicken with a pair of chopsticks and wearing an expression of utmost concentration.

 _Iwa-chan’s making his apology chicken again,_ Tooru thinks, and then steps forward to hook his chin against Iwa-chan’s shoulder.

“Oikawa!” Iwa-chan yelps, whipping around in surprise. “Don’t do that! Can’t you see I’m cooking—”

“You’re not going to burn yourself from frying chicken, Iwa-chan,” Tooru answers flippantly. “That’s so lame, even by your standards.”

“Kitchen safety is nothing to laugh at,” Iwa-chan says seriously, with all the solemnity of a man who once walked into his dorm kitchen in his sophomore year of college and was immediately met with the grisly evidence of someone nearly chopping their finger off while making dinner, and has carried psychic scars from the incident ever since. Tooru remembers laughing himself sick back when Iwa-chan told him the story over Skype.

“You’re such a mom, Iwa-chan,” Tooru sighs, but obligingly unsticks himself from Iwa-chan and goes out to the living room to wait instead. He occupies himself by watching the news, only half-paying attention to whatever the NHK anchor’s saying, until Iwa-chan finally emerges from the kitchen carrying a plate piled high with his fried chicken.

“Help me get the rest of the stuff,” Iwa-chan says, but Tooru’s already on his feet. Dinners are a well-practiced routine in their household by now, and Tooru barely even thinks about it as he scoops out two bowls of rice for them, while Iwa-chan returns to grab another plate, this time stacked with a healthy serving of stir-fried greens with tofu. Iwa-chan’s meals are always so healthy. Tooru thinks he probably counts macronutrients to fall asleep instead of sheep. But that’s also why it’s all the more startling whenever Iwa-chan decides to cook his mom’s secret fried chicken recipe for Tooru—he only does that when he’s feeling bad about something he did.

Which is why, before Iwa-chan can even say _itadakimasu_ out loud, Tooru cuts in first and says, “I’m not actually mad at you, Iwa-chan.”

Iwa-chan’s shoulders relax visibly.

“I mean,” Iwa-chan says, looking embarrassed now, “I just… I don’t really get why you’re so into reading about what other people are writing about you, but I don’t—It’s not my place to judge what you do to, to, I don’t know, to cope? And I know you’ve been having a hard time lately, so—”

“ _Iwa-chan_ ,” Tooru interrupts, desperate to stop Iwa-chan from talking because he doesn’t know what’s worse, Iwa-chan’s fumbling attempts at being nice to him, or the fact that Iwa-chan thinks all this is one big fucked up coping mechanism that he’s developed to deal with how much of a sad sack he’s turned into these days. “I told you, it’s _fine._ ”

“Okay,” Iwa-chan replies, scratching as his cheek awkwardly. “If you say so, I guess.”

“Good, because I _did_ say so,” Tooru says, picking up his chopsticks and ready to forget that this conversation ever happened.

“But if I can just say one more thing—”

“ _Iwa-chan_ ,” Tooru says again, despairing, but Iwa-chan has that determined look on his face that means that there’s no stopping him now.

“I won’t tell you what to do with your life, but you should at least do _something_ , okay?” Iwa-chan says, staring down at his bowl of rice like he’s trying to burn a hole through it with the sheer intensity of his gaze. “I don’t care what it is, but—”

“Okay, _okay_ , I get it,” Tooru insists. “Now can we please just eat already?”

“Fine,” Iwa-chan answers, but he looks relieved. “Let’s eat,” and mercifully never brings it up again.

But later that night, when Tooru’s tucked into bed with his comforter pulled up to his chin, the sound of Iwa-chan’s snoring just barely audible through the wall separating their bedrooms, he finds that he can’t stop thinking about Iwa-chan’s words.

The thing is, he knows Iwa-chan worries. Of course he does—how could he not know? And how could Iwa-chan _not_ worry, what with all that secret mother hen energy that he hides beneath that big beefy exterior? When Tooru tells the story about that first intervention Iwa-chan pulled right after he moved back to Japan, he likes to focus on the funny parts: the way Makki and Mattsun took turns harassing the bartender for free refills, much to Iwa-chan’s chagrin, or how Tobio-chan planted himself in the corner of their booth, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world but here, except for the way he kept casting sneaking glances in Shouyou’s direction, who was too busy testing the limits of his alcohol tolerance to really notice. Those are the details Tooru likes to hold on to.

But all those jokes and anecdotes are just obscuring a different truth, darker and still painfully raw, even now, five months later: the way Iwa-chan had gripped Tooru’s shoulders, eyes shining with fury and worry and something else Tooru hadn’t been able to put his finger on, and yelled, “God, Tooru, please just come with me. I can’t stand to see you like this.”

That’s the memory that comes to mind now, as Tooru watches the fluorescent numbers on his alarm clock tick from 1:59 to 2 in the morning.

 _I can’t keep doing this to Iwa-chan_ , Tooru thinks. _I have to do better._

* * *

The next day is Sunday, which means it’s grocery day. Tooru used to do the grocery shopping alone, but then Iwa-chan kept complaining about the brand of almond milk Tooru used to get, so now they do it together. And it’s better, because now Tooru can leave Iwa-chan to get all the boring ingredients his old man stomach desires while he goes to scope out the latest deals, and ponder whether this week’s strawberries look any good or not.

Tooru’s always careful whenever he has to venture out into the world outside his home—avoiding the subway, never leaving the house without a baseball cap and a face mask, making sure to draw as little attention to himself as possible—but somehow, the grocery store just feels like the one place that he can actually relax without taking all these ridiculous precautions. Maybe it’s the sleepiness of the neighborhood, or the sheer familiarity of the routine, or the fact that some of the cashiers recognize him by now but will do nothing more than smile wanly at him when he passes through the checkout line, but Tooru doesn’t put on any of his usual disguises today for his trip to the store.

He’s still thinking about his conversation with Iwa-chan from last night, but in the bright Sunday morning sunlight, on the familiar walk to the grocery store, where Tooru can smell baking bread from the nearby bakery, everything just feels a little less dire, a little less urgent. Tooru presses himself up against Iwa-chan’s side and latches onto one of Iwa-chan’s ridiculous biceps, if only just for the way Iwa-chan yelps in surprise, “Oi! Shittykawa!” but then doesn’t make any attempt to push him away.

“I hope their citron tea is back is stock,” Tooru hums, ignoring Iwa-chan completely.

“Ah,” Iwa-chan says. “Me too. That was really good.”

The citron tea _is_ back in stock, which makes Tooru’s entire week, and he grabs three entire jars because why the hell not? The strawberries look good too, ruby red and glistening, and all in all it’s a pretty great shopping trip. Even Iwa-chan looks pleased by Tooru’s acquisitions, and the sight of Iwa-chan’s grinning face as they regroup in front of the checkout counters leaves Tooru feeling pleasantly warm on the inside.

Maybe everything will actually be okay, Tooru thinks. Maybe Iwa-chan’s worrying over nothing. Maybe things are fine just the way they are.

* * *

On Monday morning, Tooru wakes up to approximately twenty missed calls and a hundred text messages from friends, family, and some complete strangers.

Blinking blearily in the sunlight streaming in through the gap in his curtains, Tooru blindly selects the first name on the long, long list of unopened text messages, which just so happens to be his sister. Feels like a pretty safe bet.

> **Nee-san [10:02AM]:** OIKAWA TOORU WHAT HAVE YOU DONE THIS TIME
> 
> **Nee-san [10:02AM]:** MOM IS POSITIVELY BESIDE HERSELF
> 
> **Nee-san [10:04AM]:** CALL ME BACK IMMEDIATELY!!!

Huh. Weird. No idea what that’s about.

He goes back to the list. The next two texts are from unknown numbers, so he deletes them without looking. The next recognizable contact after that is Shouyou.

> **Hinata Shouyou [9:48AM]:** Oi-senpai!!!
> 
> **Hinata Shouyou [9:48AM]:** Is it true??? Are you and Iwaizumi-san dating?????

_What the fuck_ , Tooru thinks, and then types it out, too, for good measure.

> **Oikawa Tooru [10:16AM]:** What the fuck
> 
> **Oikawa Tooru [10:16AM]:** Who told you that

Mercifully, Shouyou responds immediately.

> **Hinata Shouyou [10:16AM]:** Wait… so you don’t know?
> 
> **Oikawa Tooru [10:16AM]:** Don’t know what??

Shouyou’s next message is a link to what appears to be a tabloid news site. Tooru clicks on it, already filled with a deep sense of foreboding.

 _Ex-Olympian Oikawa Tooru spotted in public with mysterious beau,_ screams the headline. It takes another couple of seconds before the accompanying picture loads.

It’s a grainy photo, obviously taken hastily on someone’s phone, but even despite the shitty quality Tooru recognizes it immediately: it’s him, hanging off of Iwa-chan’s arm, grinning widely, mouth half-open in the middle of some unknown sentence. He can’t quite make out Iwa-chan’s face in the photo—it’s slightly blurry in the photo, and partially obscured so that you can only see him in profile—but it’s still obvious who it is, if not because of that familiar stocky frame then by virtue of the fact that Tooru knows exactly when and where the photo was taken: yesterday morning, on their walk to the grocery store, right before Tooru got all those jars of citron tea and Iwa-chan bought that slab of wagyu steak he wanted to try cooking next weekend. That peaceful, idyllic Sunday morning routine, so precious and rare that Tooru has kept it tucked securely in his back pocket like a secret trump card all this time, now splashed all over the front of some trashy tabloid site that apparently everyone and their grandma has already seen, cut open and bare, to be crucified in the court of public opinion.

And the worst part is that looking at the picture itself—the way Tooru’s pressing himself up against Iwa-chan’s side, how he’s beaming bright enough to rival the Sunday morning sunshine, the answering small smile on Iwa-chan’s face, the startling domesticity of it all—Tooru doesn’t blame anyone for assuming that Iwa-chan and him are dating. That’s the conclusion he’d reach, too, if he were just some random stranger looking at this photo for the first time. Which just makes everything infinitely worse, because the truth is that no matter how long and how well Tooru’s loved Iwa-chan all this time, for as long as he can even possibly remember—the truth is that _they’re not even dating,_ no matter how much Tooru wishes they were, no matter what Twitter and Instagram and his own sister might think.

That’s the worst part of it all: the proximity to all of Tooru’s most embarrassing fantasies, so close and yet so, so far away.

* * *

The real truth is this: they’d dated, once, a whole lifetime ago, right after they’d both graduated from high school, and then they broke up two months later after an awful, screaming fight because Tooru couldn’t understand why Iwa-chan wasn’t more upset about him moving to an entirely different continent, and Iwa-chan couldn’t understand why Tooru was so mad at him. There hadn’t been any time to make up after that, because then Tooru was moving to Argentina and Iwa-chan was getting ready for college, and they ended up not speaking to each other for a full year in the wake of their fight. That whole time Tooru missed Iwa-chan so much he felt it like an open wound, acute and pulsing and radiating hurt until he finally got blindingly drunk one night and mustered up the courage to send Iwa-chan a text that said _can we still be friends,_ and then woke up the next morning with a horrendous hangover and a reply in his messages that just said _of course_.

They haven’t talked about the two months they were dating, or about their fight at all since then. But even if Iwa-chan doesn’t feel the same way anymore, Tooru will never stop clinging to this one particular memory: the first time they’d kissed, under the soft glow of a streetlamp just outside of Tooru’s home, and how Iwa-chan’s lips had felt against his: warm, and alive, and like everything he’s ever wanted finally come home.

* * *

Because Iwa-chan’s sensible work ethic is his most admirable trait, he manages to wait until his lunch break to call Tooru on the phone and ask him what the fuck is going on.

“I had a drop-in client today,” Iwa-chan begins, and even though they’re just talking on the phone Tooru can practically imagine the vein already bulging in his forehead, “who turned out to be a reporter who had some very interesting questions for me.”

“Um,” Tooru says.

“Do you want to know what he asked me?” Iwa-chan continues.

“Well,” Tooru says.

“He asked me,” Iwa-chan says, carefully enunciating his words, “about you, actually.”

“Ah,” Tooru says.

“Can you please say something already?” Iwa-chan suddenly snaps. “You’re never this quiet. It’s freaking me out.”

“I mean,” Tooru says. “I’m kind of freaking out too.”

In the two hours between waking up and Iwa-chan’s phone call, Tooru managed to read the rest of the text messages on his phone (the bulk of the hundred text messages ended up just being Makki and Mattsun making fun of him, but that didn’t make it any easier to get through), spend an agonizing half an hour on speakerphone with his sister, his mother, and for some unknown reason, his nephew Takeru, and perform an extremely thorough search of his name on Google, Twitter, and Facebook like the masochist he really is deep down inside. In fact, he’d been in the middle of scrolling through a long Twitter thread arguing about the identity of the mysterious man in the photo that Tooru was clinging to when Iwa-chan called.

“Wait,” Iwa-chan says. “Have you even had breakfast yet?”

“Um,” Tooru says again.

“Have you even gotten out of bed yet?” Iwa-chan asks, because his sixth sense when it comes to Oikawa Tooru is both eerily accurate and extremely inconvenient.

“Yes,” Tooru lies badly.

“Oikawa,” Iwa-chan growls.

“Fine!” Tooru gives in. “I’ll go eat!”

“Good.” At least Iwa-chan sounds satisfied. “We’ll talk about… all this when I get back tonight.”

“Fine,” Tooru says again, and then hangs up.

Good for Iwa-chan that he can still focus on his regular workday despite the fact that the entire world is imploding, but it’s not Iwa-chan’s name that’s being splashed all over the internet right now, or Iwa-chan’s carelessly smiling face that everyone in Japan (and maybe elsewhere) is currently giggling at. At least Iwa-chan’s still able to brazenly go out in public—although maybe not for long, if nosy reporters are already knocking at his door.

In the end Tooru manages to get up, shower, and make himself a decent brunch. Then he deep cleans the entire house, tends to all of his plants, lifts weights until he feels like every single of his muscles are going to spontaneously explode, and attempts to take a nap. After forty-five minutes of trying and failing to fall asleep he proceeds to text Makki, which was a mistake, and then Mattsun, which was even worse, and then Shouyou, who blessedly lets Tooru complain on the phone at him for the next hour, Tooru doesn’t know why he even bothers having any other friends anymore. Then he rolls up his sleeves and spends the rest of the evening cooking up the greatest feast he can manage given limited resources and his precarious mental state, a hodgepodge of the Japanese dishes Iwa-chan loves best and the Argentinian ones Tooru taught himself how to cook all those years ago: provoleta made with the cheese Tooru had to order from a specialty store, shrimp and eggplant and kabocha tempura, steak with chimichurri sauce, grilled salmon marinated in miso, and when Iwa-chan still isn’t home by the time he’s done with all that he starts shaping rice into onigiri too, just to have something to do with his hands.

Tooru’s three onigiri in when he hears the click of a lock and their front door swinging open, Iwa-chan’s recognizable footsteps padding into genkan before he slips off his shoes.

“Oikawa,” Iwa-chan calls, and Tooru turns around just in time to see Iwa-chan standing in the doorway to their kitchen, staring at the mountain of food spread out across the kitchen counter.

“We _just_ went grocery shopping,” Iwa-chan says, because he is a horrible, horrible man and the most ungrateful person Tooru has ever had the misfortune of knowing.

“You’re welcome,” Tooru says pointedly. Iwa-chan just shrugs and disappears, probably off to get changed. Tooru finishes up the last of his onigiri, and then starts taking the dishes out to their common room. Eventually Iwa-chan emerges from his room, now dressed simply in a ratty college t-shirt and sweatpants, and sits down at the table just as Tooru brings out the final dish. It feels so incredibly normal that it disarms Tooru, just for a second—he can almost forget about the rest of his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day in the face of all the food in front of him, and the soft lighting of their living room, and the sight of Iwa-chan’s tired face as he scrolls idly on his phone, just like any other weekday evening.

But then Iwa-chan’s face scrunches up, the wrinkle in his brow so furrowed that it’s almost cartoonish.

“Iwa-chan?” Tooru prompts, and Iwa-chan’s head snaps up almost immediately.

“It’s nothing,” Iwa-chan says quickly—too quickly.

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru says again. “Show me.”

Iwa-chan hesitates, but between the strength of Tooru’s glare and Iwa-chan’s inability to keep secrets from him, he crumbles easily.

“Fine,” Iwa-chan acquiesces. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He hands his phone over for Tooru to look at, and he’s immediately greeted by yet another trashy tabloid article. The headline reads: _Oikawa Tooru’s secret boyfriend?! Ushijima Wakatoshi’s history with Oikawa!_

Tooru stands up abruptly. “I am going to kill myself,” he announces.

“Oikawa,” Iwa-chan says warningly.

Tooru marches over to their couch, throws himself onto it, and presses one of their cushions into his face. And then he screams, for as long and as loudly as he possibly can.

There’s a long silence after he’s done screaming. Then:

“Are you finished?” Iwa-chan asks.

“You’re the worst, Iwa-chan,” Tooru groans, but his face is still mashed into the cushion, so he’s not sure how much of it Iwa-chan can actually make out. “You’re the absolute worst and I hate you and I wish I never agreed to move in with you.”

“C’mon, let’s eat,” Iwa-chan tries to cajole him. “The food’s getting cold.”

Tooru throws the cushion aside. “I’m the one who cooked it all,” he grumbles, but he goes to sit back down at the table anyway. Iwa-chan’s already decided to get started, shoving a piece of eggplant tempura into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully.

“’S good,” he says between bites, but Tooru doesn’t even have it in him to feel mollified by the compliment.

“You don’t even look anything like Ushiwaka,” Tooru mumbles under his breath.

“Well,” Iwa-chan says, still continuing to eat, “you gotta admit it’s actually kinda funny.”

“Iwa-chan!” Tooru gasps, mouth hanging open at the betrayal of it all.

“If I’d told you ten years ago that you’d eventually make it all the way to the Olympics,” Iwa-chan goes on blithely, “only to one day be mistaken for Ushiwaka’s live-in boyfriend—”

“ _Iwaizumi Hajime_ ,” Tooru thunders, enunciating each syllable clearly and precisely. “I’m going to call your mom and tell her that you’re bullying me in my moment of greatest need.”

Iwa-chan’s face goes ashen. Mrs. Iwaizumi is just that typical fussy mother figure that you inevitably turn into when you only have one child and said child still refuses to get married by that age of 31, and Tooru has never been above exploiting her more overbearing tendencies when it comes to getting what he wants from Iwa-chan. He doesn’t pull that card often, but it always works.

“Sorry,” Iwa-chan mumbles.

“Well, you should be,” Tooru tells him. He crosses his arms over his chest for extra emphasis. “I don’t get how you can be so blasé about the whole thing.”

Iwa-chan shrugs. “I guess I was pretty freaked out when that reporter showed up,” he says. “It was like an ambush—pretending to be a client and then suddenly whipping out a voice recorder—”

“Oh my god,” Tooru says, because he can just imagine the look on Iwa-chan’s face when it happened.

“—but then he just asked me what I knew about you,” Iwa-chan says. “He didn’t suspect I was in that photo at all.”

“Yeah, well, now they think it’s Ushiwaka instead,” Tooru grumbles.

“Look,” Iwa-chan says, his voice even and calming. “They think it’s Ushiwaka now but they’re going to realize it’s not him and then move on. And then eventually the news story is going to die out when there aren’t any new updates.”

Tooru makes a vague grunting noise in response, because he’s still mad enough that he doesn’t want to admit that Iwa-chan’s actually making a good point.

“They don’t know it’s me, so I can still live my life normally,” Iwa-chan continues. “And you’ll have to lay low for a while, which sucks, I know—”

“Good thing I stocked up on citron tea,” Tooru mumbles.

“—but things will go back to normal eventually,” Iwa-chan finishes. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take for everything to die down, but it’ll work out in the end,” and he sounds so sure of himself that Tooru can’t help but to believe him.

“Okay,” Tooru says, his voice quiet. “But you have to FaceTime me every time you go to the grocery store.”

“Fine,” Iwa-chan agrees. “Now can we please eat?”

“I know, I know, my cooking is delicious, you just can’t help yourself,” Tooru sighs, and Iwa-chan smiles.

“I already told you,” Iwa-chan says. “It’s good.”

And Tooru smiles too, because somehow Iwa-chan’s always managed to make him brave.

It only occurs to him much later that they never even talked about the real crux of the matter: the fact that everyone took one look at them in their natural habit and assumed that they’re dating, when they’re very decidedly not. But by that point it’s too late to bring it up, and besides, even someone like Tooru knows how not to make a bad situation even worse.

* * *

The good news is that the Ushiwaka narrative thankfully gets shot down quickly after Ushiwaka’s PR team puts out a statement dispelling the rumors. Also, people on social media start pointing out that the guy in the photo really looks nothing like Ushiwaka, and also it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s ever been in the same room as them that Ushiwaka’s significantly taller than Tooru. So that’s that.

The bad news is that now everyone’s on the hunt for the _real_ identity of the mysterious man captured in that photograph. Tooru disables the notifications on all his public social media accounts, and then his private ones too, because his friends are the absolute worst and have lost all right to contact him. Makki keeps asking him when he’s going to publicly announce his marriage already, and Mattsun won’t stop sending him links to wedding dresses and asking him for his measurements. Even his friends in Argentina have somehow gotten wind of the whole affair—Tooru has no idea why or how and he really doesn’t care to find out—and they’re all equally obnoxious about it too. The final straw is when Ushijima Wakatoshi himself sends Tooru a long LINE message sending his condolences about the affair, which would have been fine and dandy if he hadn’t ended the message with “by the way, is the man in the photo Iwaizumi-san?” and Tooru immediately blocks him without a second thought.

Compounding that bad news is the fact that Tooru is now on house arrest, and is slowly but surely finding himself going stir-crazy.

It’s like that first terrible month back in Japan all over again, but somehow worse, because Tooru was just getting used to having a life outside of his home again. He misses Mattsun’s obscure bars, and the grocery store, and the local bakery, and driving through congested Tokyo highways. It’s been six months since he moved back to Japan and disappeared from the public eye, and he was almost just starting to feel like a regular human being again: relishing the simple joys of getting lost in a crowd, having a meal with friends, going to 7-11 at midnight, an early morning jog while the rest of the city is still waking up. Tooru didn’t realize how much he’s come to love all these little things until he finds himself suddenly bereft of them, and instead, now he’s back to all of his worst reclusive habits all over again.

Mostly, he just spends his time tracking the slow death of his public persona on the internet.

Every single news site ever runs a blow-by-blow recap of his career, which actually isn’t so bad. It’s nice to have reminders of his best achievements. Good fodder for the Oikawa-san’s Greatest Hits bookmarks folder. The problem is that every single tabloid site is now doing a deep dive of every person Tooru has ever met in his entire life, and it only takes a week and a half before the first article about Iwa-chan gets posted on the great wide web.

Somehow, Iwa-chan manages to remain completely oblivious the whole time. He remains unfazed even when Tooru shoves the article in question (charmingly headlined _Childhood friend or secret lover?! 5 things you need to know about Iwaizumi Hajime_ ) right under his nose.

“They did their research,” is all Iwa-chan says, almost like he’s actually impressed.

“You should be way more concerned about this,” Tooru tells him despairingly.

Iwa-chan just shrugs. “It might be good for business.”

If anything he’s way more worried about Tooru than about himself, which would actually be kind of sweet if it didn’t reflect so poorly on Iwa-chan’s belief in Tooru’s ability to act like a functional adult human being. He keeps texting Tooru during his lunch breaks to check up on him, or coming home from work bearing all of Tooru’s favorite konbini snacks as gifts. He even willingly agrees to watch an alien documentary with Tooru one weekend, and doesn’t complain once about how obviously fake the whole thing is the entire time.

Normally Tooru will go to extreme lengths in order to demand Iwa-chan’s attention—will ask for it, loudly and obnoxiously, any chance he can get. But even though he has it now, he doesn’t know if he even wants it anymore.

Maybe it’s because Iwa-chan’s attentiveness is veering too close to the edge of pity for Tooru’s comfort. Or maybe it’s the fact that all of Tooru’s most secret feelings have been unknowingly gutted open and displayed for the whole world to see, and even then Iwa-chan will be the best roommate and friend that Tooru could have ever asked for but he’ll never be Tooru’s boyfriend again, and that hidden wound in Tooru’s chest that’s only just started to scar over has opened up all over again, as fresh and as painful as it’d been when they’d broken up all those years ago.

But never let it be said that Oikawa Tooru isn’t a rotten opportunist. He’ll take what he can get, and refuses to feel guilty about it as he presses up against Iwa-chan’s side, not even paying attention to the stupid alien documentary anymore. He’s only human.

* * *

Then the collective population of the internet seems to arrive at the conclusion that the guy in the photo really is Iwaizumi Hajime all at once.

Tooru watches the articles and tweets and Instagram posts roll in like one long never-ending fever dream. It starts with the creepy introductory articles that aren’t technically illegal, Tooru guesses, but still make his skin crawl: who is this Iwaizumi guy? What’s his deal? Did you know Oikawa Tooru has mentioned him in exactly 27 different interviews to date, which is a fact that is not only apparently true but also so embarrassing that Tooru genuinely considers moving back to Argentina?

Except it just gets progressively worse from there, because then Iwa-chan starts actually getting famous.

It’s Iwa-chan’s fault, actually, for continuing to remain blissfully unaware of the developing situation despite the fact that Tooru has started reading articles about him out loud over dinner, and despite the fact that reporters won’t stop showing up at his physical therapy clinic now, and despite the fact that the last time Iwa-chan went grocery shopping he got _recognized_ , but then chalked it up as just a freak accident. No matter how much Tooru tries to convince him that they’re both currently mired in a code red emergency, Iwa-chan still insists on living his life like there’s nothing wrong, despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary.

Either Iwa-chan’s secretly a Buddhist monk and has managed to attain spiritual enlightenment at some point over the past ten years, or he has actual, literal shit for brains, because there’s no other explanation for how nonchalant he’s being about the whole thing.

“It’s not a big deal,” he keeps telling Tooru. “It’ll blow over.”

Except it doesn’t blow over, and shows absolutely zero sign of blowing over anytime in the near future, and also apparently now people on the internet have realized that _Iwa-chan is actually kind of hot._

The comments start out as a trickle, innocuous enough for Tooru to mostly ignore. The occasional thirst post about Iwa-chan’s arms, which really isn’t news, so Tooru just scrolls past them. But then somehow, when Tooru isn’t paying attention, the trickle mushrooms into a flood, and then one day Tooru wakes up to #HotDoctor trending on Twitter, and that is the exact day that Tooru’s life ends.

“Technically I’m not a doctor,” Iwa-chan says, when Tooru calls him during his lunch break to yell at him about it.

“That’s not the point!” Tooru cries.

“Work is gonna get troublesome because of this,” Iwa-chan mutters, like Tooru didn’t say anything at all.

“Are you actually happy that people on the internet think you’re hot?” Tooru accuses, voice rising.

“What the hell?” Iwa-chan says, and oh, so _that’s_ what finally gets to him, huh? “Do you seriously think that’s the case?”

“Maybe I do!” Tooru fires back. “You’ve been so weirdly calm about everything! There’s no other explanation for why you’re not freaking out about this!”

“Oikawa,” Iwa-chan says placatingly.

“Don’t you Oikawa me!” Tooru responds, fully aware of how hysterical he sounds right now.

“Wait, are you jealous?” Iwa-chan suddenly asks. “Are you jealous that I’m receiving more attention than you?”

“Iwa-chan, you’re so fucking stupid,” Tooru says, and then hangs up.

Talking to Iwa-chan typically has the effect of helping to sooth Tooru’s rattled nerves, but this time it just leaves him feeling even worse. And Tooru’s not an idiot, he knows exactly why he’s so annoyed right now—because Tooru has been in love with Iwa-chan since he was a butt-ugly middle schooler who used to wash his face with hand soap, but now that Iwa-chan’s finally grown into his features and blossomed into a hunky adult man with a decent skincare routine, everyone gets to reap the benefits of Tooru’s patience without having to deal with his multiple decades worth of strife. It’s just so fundamentally unfair, and no one will ever be able to sympathize with Tooru’s plight, least of all Iwa-chan himself.

Predictably, Iwa-chan tries to smooth things over by coming home that evening with a gift to appease Tooru’s bad mood—a whole variety pack of Garigari-kun ice pops this time, which Tooru immediately tears into because his love for ice cream trumps even his ability to be petty about Iwa-chan—but there’s really nothing Iwa-chan can possibly do to help get rid of that itch of annoyance that keeps clawing away at his insides. Nothing except the hypothetical scenario where Iwa-chan drops onto one knee and professes his undying love for Tooru that is, but that’s not ever going to happen, so Tooru banishes the thought the second it rears its ugly head.

Instead Tooru sulks for a week, and Iwa-chan deals with Tooru sulking for a week, and meanwhile the internet rages on without end. Iwa-chan keeps getting spotted in public, which is not surprising because he’s a moron who still refuses to change his daily routines, and he probably also continues to get harassed at work, but if he is he isn’t telling Tooru anymore, which is just further evidence of how stupid he’s being.

Iwa-chan keeps insisting that it’s only a matter of time until everything blows over and everyone eventually loses interest in the whole affair. Tooru isn’t so sure.

* * *

The breaking point comes almost a week after that, when Tooru checks Instagram one evening before Iwa-chan gets home from work, and sees a selfie of some random girl with a startling number of followers posing next to a bewildered looking Iwa-chan, captioned _look who I bumped into today!_ and it’s like a dam bursts inside of him, wild and uncontainable in all its omnipotent fury.

Iwa-chan mostly just looks confused, but the girl next to him is all smiles, practically radiating excitement. They're standing so close to each other. They look good together.

Something possesses him, right there and then, and he barely even registers what he’s doing as he taps the comment button, types out the words _you don’t get to have him, he’s mine_ 😇, and then hits send. And then he puts his phone away and doesn’t touch it for the rest of the day.

Tooru actually manages to forget about that comment pretty successfully—Iwa-chan returns home less than an hour later, this time bearing a succulent of all things, and between trying to name the new plant and Iwa-chan’s overly convoluted story about how he ended up acquiring said plant in the first place, Tooru doesn’t even remember to bring up the Instagram post at all.

In his own defense, Iwa-chan probably should’ve been the one to bring up the fact that he was just accosted on the streets of Tokyo by some random Instagram influencer. But he doesn’t bring it up, and Tooru doesn’t bring it up, and overall it’s a relatively peaceful Thursday night.

Then Tooru wakes up the next morning, and the other shoe finally drops.

* * *

Tooru experiences a peculiar sense of déjà vu when he wakes up bleary-eyed to his phone ringing. It takes a second before his eyes can even focus enough to make out the name on his phone screen: it’s Mattsun. Tooru briefly debates the merits of picking up versus ignoring the call and going back to sleep. In that span of time his phone stops and then starts ringing again. Fine. He’ll humor Mattsun, just for a bit.

“You’re ruining my beauty sleep,” Tooru complains when he picks up.

“Are you and Iwaizumi actually dating?” Mattsun asks.

“What the fuck,” Tooru says. “I’m going back to bed.”

“So what I’m hearing is that you unleashed a storm on Instagram and didn’t even know,” Mattsun says blandly.

“Somehow I feel like I’ve gone through this before,” Tooru replies faintly.

“Did you or did you not respond to a photo of Iwaizumi with the words ‘you don’t get to have him, he’s mine’?” Mattsun asks.

And then the memory of last night slams into Tooru like a truck.

“Oh shit,” Tooru says.

“So you actually did it, huh?” Mattsun replies.

“Oh shit,” Tooru says again. “Oh shit.”

“Did you actually forget?” Mattsun asks, clearly amused.

“Oh shit,” Tooru says. “ _Mattsun_. Why did I do that?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“ _Why did I do that?_ ”

“Again, no idea why you’re asking me.”

The thing is, Tooru does actually know why he did it: a momentary fit of jealousy, mixed with the underlying conditions of self-imposed isolation and an extended one-third-life crisis. A combination of all of Tooru’s worst self-destructive tendencies, come together to wreak even worse havoc on his already unnecessarily convoluted life.

“I just wanted to retire peacefully,” Tooru mumbles. “I didn’t want any of this.”

There’s a beat of silence, and when Mattsun starts talking again his voice is far gentler than before.

“Look,” he says, “I just thought you should know. How you deal with it is up to you.”

Tooru sighs loudly. “I guess you’re right,” he says. “Thanks, Mattsun.”

“But if I could just say one thing—”

“Mattsun, if you ask me one more stupid question—”

“As someone who’s been friends with you and Iwaizumi for almost half my life now,” Mattsun says, “you guys have the weirdest friendship ever.”

“Okay?” Tooru says. “Your point being?”

“I mean,” Mattsun says, “this is just kind of a fucked up situation to be in, is all.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Tooru says. “Goodbye, Mattsun.”

“Whatever, Oikawa,” Mattsun says, sounding bored now. “Bye.” And then he hangs up before Tooru can say anything else.

So now Tooru has to tell Iwa-chan, but he can’t think of a single other thing that he wants to do less. Maybe he should just wait for Iwa-chan to find out on his own. Someone’s probably going to tell him eventually. But then Iwa-chan’s lunch break comes and goes without a single text or phone call, and Tooru wonders if maybe he can actually get away with it. Maybe he doesn’t have to tell Iwa-chan anything at all, and he can just pretend nothing happened, and maybe Iwa-chan’s actually right and everything will just go away eventually if Tooru’s patient enough.

Tooru almost manages to convince himself of that—at least, right up until Iwa-chan arrives home from work almost two hours earlier than usual, looking absolutely mutinous with fury.

“Oh!” Tooru almost jumps in surprise when he hears the door slam shut, and turns to see Iwa-chan emerge from their front door. “You’re early.”

“Shittykawa Tooru,” Iwa-chan growls. “What the hell did you do.”

All of Tooru’s greatest hopes immediately come crashing to the ground.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tooru lies, but evidently that just makes Iwa-chan even angrier. He storms into the living room, not even bothering to take his shoes off, and Tooru briefly debates the merits of getting on his knees and begging for his life.

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Iwa-chan asks, coming close enough to grab Tooru by the front of his shirt. “Is that it?”

“No,” Tooru says faintly.

“Then why are you acting like I’m stupid?” Iwa-chan says. Tooru’s seen Iwa-chan annoyed, and exasperated, and frustrated, but he hasn’t seen Iwa-chan this angry in a very, very long time, and the sight of his furious face makes panic well up in Tooru’s chest like an overwhelming tide.

“Sorry,” Tooru whispers, wide-eyed and almost mute in the face of Iwa-chan’s anger.

Iwa-chan freezes for a second, letting go of Tooru’s shirt. Then before Tooru can ask if he just suffered a stroke, Iwa-chan sinks down into a squat, buries his face in his hands, and groans.

“Iwa-chan?” Tooru asks, suddenly confused. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m still mad at you,” Iwa-chan mutters, his voice muffled because he still has his face in his hands. “So stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” Now he’s gone way past the realm of confused and straight into being downright bewildered.

“Never mind,” Iwa-chan says. “It’s nothing.”

Iwa-chan shows no sign of getting up any time soon, so Tooru gets down onto the ground too. At least know he can finally see Iwa-chan’s face—or at least, the parts of his face that aren’t obscured by his hands.

“You’re still mad at me?” Tooru asks.

“Yeah,” Iwa-chan says. He finally looks up, and the furrow in his brow still remains fully intact. “Why did you post that comment?”

“I don’t know,” Tooru says, because he thinks that this is a lie that’s safe for him to tell. Or rather, it’s a lie that he has to tell, because revealing the actual truth is simply not an option. “It was a spur of the moment thing,” he says instead, by way of explanation.

Iwa-chan sighs loudly. “You caused a lot of trouble for me, you know.”

“Oh,” Tooru says.

“I had to cancel my last few appointments of the day,” Iwa-chan says. “My receptionist told me to go home. We were getting too many calls.”

Tooru winces. “Sorry,” he says again.

Iwa-chan’s silent for a moment, almost like he’s thinking. Finally he says, “Whatever. What’s done is done. Just… fix this, please.”

And it’s only then that Tooru actually looks, _really_ looks at Iwa-chan’s face: the lines around his mouth, the pale hue to his skin. He looks tired, Tooru realizes. For all his seemingly infinite patience and almost callous certainty that everything would blow over eventually, the whole ordeal must have been weighing on him too, in ways that even Tooru hasn’t been aware of.

“Okay,” Tooru says, his voice gone quiet. “I’ll do something.”

“Thanks.” Iwa-chan lets out a long breath, and then straightens up, rolling his shoulders as he stands. He looks back down at Tooru. “Wanna get takeout?”

“Yeah,” Tooru replies. Iwa-chan reaches out a hand, and Tooru takes it, letting Iwa-chan haul him back up too. “Let’s get udon.”

“Sure,” Iwa-chan says. “Sounds good.”

They don’t talk about it for the rest of the night.

* * *

Saturday goes by. Sunday goes by. Monday goes by. Tooru still hasn’t done anything.

He knows it’s really not as hard as he’s making it out to be. All he has to do is type out some statement on the Notes app of his iPhone, post it on Instagram, and let the forces of the internet do their thing. He’s started writing the statement, at least, but on Saturday morning he typed out the words _while the photo does depict me and Iwaizumi Hajime, whom I am currently living with, the rumors about us being in a romantic relationship are not true_ , and immediately felt sick to the stomach.

Iwa-chan hasn’t brought it up at all. Tooru knows he’s just being considerate, but he still can’t shake the feeling that he’s letting Iwa-chan down in some way the longer he puts things off. It’s just—every time he thinks about having to willingly put himself in the public eye, even if it’s just through one lousy Instagram post, he freezes up.

It’s a feeling he hasn’t felt for a long time, not since that first terrible month he moved back to Japan, and told everyone he didn’t want to leave the house when the truth was that he couldn’t. Not since Iwa-chan grabbed him by the shoulders five months ago and begged him come with him.

This is what it feels like: like being mired in quicksand. Like sinking into water. Like he’s trying to run a marathon, but his limbs are made of lead. Like he thought he was getting better, but now the evidence is clearer than ever that he really, really wasn’t.

Time continues to tick by. Tooru continues to wait.

* * *

One night, he dreams.

In the dream, he is nineteen all over again. He is in his first apartment in San Juan, in his tiny bedroom with the baby blue walls and secondhand furniture lovingly culled from the nearby thrift store. The early morning Argentine sun streaming in through his window is just as dazzling as he remembers, filling the whole room with warmth, bathing him in light.

In the dream, he has just woken up. His stomach is roiling. His head hurts like a motherfucker. The familiar pangs of a hangover.

He rolls over and grabs his phone. He unlocks it, and is immediately met with the evidence of the last text he sent: a LINE message from the night before to one Iwaizumi Hajime. It reads, _can we still be friends?_

In the dream, there is no reply.

* * *

Tooru wakes up, and he is thirty years old, and he is lying in his bed in his house in Tokyo.

Distantly, he can hear the sounds of Iwa-chan moving about the house, shuffling around, getting ready for work. He can hear his footsteps against the wooden floors, the sound of the coffee machine going, a faucet being turned on and then off.

Tooru rolls over and grabs his phone. He unlocks it and boots up the Notes app. He quickly types out a statement. _While the photo does depict me and Iwaizumi Hajime, whom I am currently living with, the rumors about us being in a romantic relationship are not true. I request that you respect my privacy, as well as the privacy of my friends and family, at this time._

He takes a screenshot. He pulls up Instagram. He posts the photo. And then he puts his phone away and goes back to sleep.


	2. Part II: Miyagi

In the end, the whole media circus dies out as quickly as it started.

Tooru stops tracking himself on social media after he posts the statement, but he knows things get better because Iwa-chan starts having an easier time at work. Also, Makki and Mattsun won’t stop complaining to him about how boring everything is, and asking him to start some shit all over again for their personal entertainment.

Weeks pass. The days bleed together without Tooru noticing, and then one day Iwa-chan comes home from work, sits down at the dining table, and says, “So it’s your birthday next week.”

“Oh,” Tooru says, caught completely off-guard. He totally forgot, which is startling for him, because all his life Tooru has been an incorrigible bastard who is just shameless enough to demand that everyone around him drop everything they’re doing to celebrate the glorious day of his birth. For his 21st birthday he made Iwa-chan call him at precisely midnight in Argentina, despite the fact that it was noon in Japan and he knew Iwa-chan had class at that time, and when Iwa-chan was two minutes late Tooru held it over his head for months afterwards. Tooru usually plans out his birthday celebrations weeks in advance, and expects everyone to play along nicely—sending his friends casual reminders of the upcoming occasion, dropping not-so-subtle hints about the gifts he’d like to receive, refusing to toss to Kyoutani for three days straight when he forgot about Tooru’s birthday that one year, and only stopping when their coach threatened to make Iwa-chan captain instead.

Tooru has never forgotten about his own birthday before.

“Well?” Iwa-chan says, now peering at him like he’s just sprouted an extra head. “What do you wanna do?”

“Um.” Tooru finds himself growing nervous under Iwa-chan’s questioning gaze. His palms are sweating. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Iwa-chan still doesn’t look fully convinced.

“Okay,” he says. “Let me know. I can take the day off if you want.”

Tooru feels the corners of his mouth twitch. “So eager to spend the day with me, Iwa-chan?”

And now Iwa-chan’s trademark scowl is back on his face, such a familiar sight that it’s honestly a relief.

“Never mind,” Iwa-chan says. “I’m actually going to be at work the entire day. Sorry.”

“Iwa-chan!” Tooru cries, and just like that, normalcy is restored.

* * *

Or at least, a façade of normalcy. Because over the next few days Tooru racks his brains trying to figure out how he wants to celebrate his birthday, and keeps coming up empty.

He tries to think about what the old Tooru would do. The old Tooru would probably demand Iwa-chan take the entire week off and take him to a beach resort in Okinawa. He’d probably drag Mattsun and Makki along just for the heck of it. The old Tooru would probably spend his birthday drinking piña coladas and getting delightfully sunburned, and then ideally cap off the day by pushing Iwa-chan into the ocean just to have an excuse for him to take his shirt off.

The current Tooru mostly just feels mildly ill at the thought of having to be out in public in any way.

At least he manages to dodge the question for a while, but then two days before his birthday, he’s sitting on his couch with Iwa-chan, watching the latest episode of the new Godzilla reboot, when Iwa-chan turns to him and says offhandedly, “So have you made up your mind what you wanna do for your birthday yet?”

And then his response slips out of his mouth unwittingly. “I don’t want to do anything,” he says, so quietly that his words are almost lost underneath the din of the monster battle happening on their TV.

Iwa-chan just chuckles. “Seriously? Who are you and what the hell have you done with Oikawa?” he jokes.

Tooru doesn’t say anything. Iwa-chan turns to him, still smiling, but the second he sees the look on Tooru’s face his face falls instantly.

“Oikawa?” Iwa-chan says, eyes very wide.

It’s only then that Tooru realizes he’s crying.

Iwa-chan turns off the TV.

“Oikawa,” Iwa-chan says again.

“I don’t know, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, breathing hard to keep himself together. “To be honest, I haven’t been myself for a while.”

“Hey, it’s okay.” Iwa-chan reaches out, places his hands reassuringly on Tooru’s shoulders. “I get it. The past few weeks have been stressful.”

But Tooru shakes his head. “No, not just for the past few weeks. It’s been like that for a long time now.” Shit, he can feel the tears rolling down his cheeks—he’s always been an ugly crier. He really wishes Iwa-chan didn’t have to see him like this. “I know you’ve felt it too.”

“Hey, hey.” Iwa-chan’s voice is low, quiet, like he’s trying to calm a spooked animal. “It’s okay, we can just have a quiet night in, we can get takeout—”

“You don't get it, Iwa-chan,” Tooru interrupts. He squeezes his eyes shut, because if he has to keep on looking at Iwa-chan’s face, worried and scared and pained, he’s going to end up falling apart entirely. “I don’t want to spend time with anyone—not Shouyou, not Mattsun, not Makki, not even you, I just want—”

“Oikawa,” Iwa-chan repeats, like he can’t think of a single other thing to say right now, like it’s some kind of magical incantation that will somehow make this whole bad situation go away.

“I just want to be alone,” Tooru finishes. “I just want to feel okay as myself again.” And now Tooru’s crying even harder now, sobs that wrack his whole body, leave him trembling. He hasn’t cried like this since he was nineteen years old, young and terrified in a brand-new country, so homesick he thought he might actually die from it. There were only two things that kept him from giving up entirely and moving back home in defeat: his own intrinsic stubbornness, and the sight of Iwa-chan’s wonderfully familiar face on Skype patching him up, making him feel whole again. God, he wants so badly for Iwa-chan to mend all his broken parts and put him back together, but he doesn’t know how to ask for it, how to will it into existence. He wants so badly for things to be simple again, like they used to be back when he was younger and dumber and had no idea just how good life used to be.

“I just miss being a kid again,” Tooru mutters, wiping his face uselessly with the back of his hand.

There’s a long beat of silence, when all Tooru can hear is the way his breaths hitch miserably in his throat. Then—

“Well, you can go back,” Iwa-chan says.

“What?” Tooru looks up, startled. Iwa-chan’s face is perfectly serious, and all the more handsome for it.

“You can go back to Miyagi for your birthday,” he says. “Go see your family. Take the car. I’ll be fine without it for a few days.”

Tooru stares and stares at Iwa-chan, his wondrously earnest expression, so determined like he’s already made up his mind.

“But what about you?” Tooru asks.

“What?” Iwa-chan’s forehead crinkles, and Tooru can’t help but feel a little better already, just from seeing that wrinkle between his eyebrows.

“You don’t want to come with me?” Tooru continues.

Iwa-chan glances away, letting go of Tooru’s shoulders. “I thought you said you didn’t want to spend your birthday with me,” he mutters.

“Wait.” Now Tooru’s the one scooting closer, close enough that he can touch the side of Iwa-chan’s neck and make him look back at Tooru again. “I didn’t mean it, Iwa-chan.”

“Look, Oikawa, it’s really okay if you don’t—”

“And besides,” Tooru interrupts, because if he lets Iwa-chan keep talking he’s going to end up digging himself into a hole for no good reason, “don’t be stupid, Iwa-chan, you really expect me to do the drive up all by myself? That’s way too cruel, even for you.”

And then a miracle happens right then: Tooru watches as a small smile blooms on Iwa-chan’s face, slow and careful like a flower unfurling in the sun, so subtle that he would’ve missed it if not for the fact that he’s spent his entire life attuning himself to the myriad of Iwa-chan’s wonderful facial expressions, as astonishing and incredible as the feeling of watching a teammate hit one of his tosses with exact, blinding precision.

“Well,” Iwa-chan says. “I guess I can’t expect you to drive all that way on your own.”

And even though Tooru’s pretty sure his face is still all puffed up and ugly from crying, he finds himself smiling too, just the tiniest upward curve at the corners of his lips, small and secret to match the look on Iwa-chan’s face.

“Thanks, Iwa-chan,” Tooru mumbles, his voice still a watery mess.

“Don’t mention it,” Iwa-chan says. So Tooru doesn’t.

* * *

In the end, Iwa-chan reveals that he already took it upon himself to take a couple days off of work, because he was expecting Tooru to pull a fast one on him anyway. Granted, he probably wasn’t expecting the part where Tooru burst into tears in the middle of a Godzilla TV show episode, but whatever. If the shoe fits and all.

It’s a five-hour drive from Tokyo to Miyagi. Iwa-chan dutifully packs snacks and water, and Tooru dumps six bags of fruit gummies into the back of the car when Iwa-chan isn’t looking. He also carefully compiles a playlist for the drive with all of Iwa-chan’s favorite 90s punk rock bands, mixed with the Latin music Tooru came to love over the ten years he spent living in Argentina, and then also throws in some AKB48 only because he knows their music drives Iwa-chan insane. After that all that’s left to do is pack their things—a simple backpack for Iwa-chan and a whole suitcase for Tooru because he’s not a goddamn heathen, loaded with several changes of clothes and Tooru’s entire skincare regimen and a box of homemade empanadas as a gift for his parents to apologize for being a negligent son.

Then it’s them arguing over who should be in the driver’s seat first (Tooru pulls the ‘it’s my birthday’ card almost immediately and Iwa-chan gives in quickly after that), and then they’re off. Tooru boots up his playlist with the volume dial turned all the way up just as Iwa-chan pulls out of their driveway, and The Blue Hearts instantly fills the space of their tiny car, one of Iwa-chan’s favorite bands. Iwa-chan blinks, surprised, when he realizes what song is playing, and then his face slowly morphs into a wide grin as his fingers begin tapping against the steering wheel along to the beat of the music.

Tooru’s gotten good at not staring too openly at Iwa-chan—most days, Iwa-chan’s the only real-life human person Tooru sees anyway, and there’s something to be said about having too much of a good thing—but times like these, Tooru just can’t help himself. He can feel the music in his veins and warm sunshine against his skin, and next to him Iwa-chan’s smiling face is like a cool shock of water on a hot summer’s day, like the first taste of air after spending too long underwater, like everything Tooru could ever possibly want for the rest of his life right here next to him.

 _This was Iwa-chan’s best idea yet,_ Tooru thinks as he leans back against his seat, closes his eyes, and smiles too.

* * *

The trip ends up taking way longer than expected, because Tooru makes them take way too many rest stops and detours, and he keeps wanting to stop at too many random towns to buy kitschy souvenirs. Also, the first time an AKB48 song comes on, Iwa-chan actually pulls over so that he can stop the car, wrestle Tooru’s phone from his grip like the uncouth gorilla man he really is, and then personally delete every single trashy girl group song from Tooru’s playlist, all while ignoring Tooru’s most pitiful protests.

Honestly, Tooru would be lying if he said the car ride was the most life changing experience of his life. It’s boring most of the time. When Iwa-chan isn’t driving, he’s either fast asleep in the passenger seat or pointing out random things along the highway as if Tooru doesn’t have eyes of his own. Meanwhile Tooru oscillates between singing along to his playlist—badly—every time Iwa-chan falls asleep, ignoring stop signs because he was a terrible driver in Argentina and now an even worse one in Japan, and eating fruit gummies until he gives himself a stomach ache and then makes Iwa-chan pull over at yet another rest stop.

But it’s also the wide-open road and the wind in his hair whenever he rolls down the windows. It’s going way past the speed limit on the emptier stretches of road, and even though Iwa-chan keeps yelling at him to slow down, the way he grins from ear to ear betrays the rush of adrenaline he must be feeling in his veins too. It’s the shocking blast of the A/C and the too-loud beat of the music forcing him and Iwa-chan to yell at each other just to be heard. It’s the wide-open road, and it’s the pale blue sky, and it’s Iwa-chan: his calloused hand on the gear stick, his profile lit by the sun.

* * *

Tooru’s glad when the car finally rolls into Miyagi in the late afternoon—he desperately needs to stretch, and to feel the ground underneath his feet again. But he still can’t help but feel a like melancholy when Iwa-chan drops him off in front of his parents’ house, leaning out of the window to say goodbye.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come inside?” Tooru asks, and refuses to be embarrassed about how his tone of voice is veering dangerously close to the territory of straight up begging.

“I told you,” Iwa-chan says, infinitely patient as always. “I’m getting dinner with the entire extended family. It was mom’s idea.”

“But it’s my birthday,” Tooru says petulantly.

Iwa-chan’s face softens. He looks genuinely wistful for a moment. “Sorry,” he says. “We can hang out tomorrow, though.”

“Are you saying your mom’s more important than me, Iwa-chan?” Tooru asks.

“Well,” Iwa-chan says, the corner of his mouth lilting up into a smirk. “When you put it that way.”

Tooru sighs. “Tomorrow, we’re spending the entire day together,” he insists.

“We already do that all the time,” Iwa-chan points out.

That seemingly innocuous comment manages to stun Tooru into silence for long enough that Iwa-chan manages to shift the gear stick back into drive without him noticing.

“Happy birthday, Oikawa,” he says. And before Tooru can regain his bearings again he’s off, leaving Tooru behind to watch him drive away.

* * *

Tooru doesn’t have too much time to sulk after that, because right after Iwa-chan turns a corner and disappears from view, his mom bursts out of the front door and envelops him in a suffocating hug. She pants Tooru down, as if inspecting him for defects, and then when she’s seemingly satisfied by what she finds she drags Tooru into the house with a surprising amount of strength for a 150cm tall middle-aged woman. She still smells just like how Tooru remembers, and a sudden pang of nostalgia hits him so hard that for a moment he forgets entirely how to breathe. He hasn’t seen his family in months—the last time they met was right after he moved back to Japan, and his parents and sister came up to Tokyo to visit him. It was a short trip, not enough time for them to really talk about anything important, and besides, they weren’t in Miyagi then, and that seemed to have made all the difference.

The house is technically still the same one that he grew up in, but a few years after he moved to Argentina his parents had the whole place remodeled, and now they live here with his sister and brother-in-law. Takeru goes to college in Osaka now, but he usually comes back home over the summer, and sure enough, when Tooru walks into the house Takeru’s there, dutifully helping to wash vegetables in the kitchen.

“Look who’s here!” his mother announces gleefully, and in response comes a loud shriek coming from upstairs, followed by his sister bounding noisily down the stairs and charging straight in Tooru’s direction.

“The prodigal son finally returns, huh?” she says, before wrapping an arm around the back of Tooru’s neck, pulling him down, and then ruffling Tooru’s hair like he’s a bratty ten-year-old all over again.

“Okay, c’mon,” Tooru pleads, laughing. He manages to wriggle out of her grip, and when he straightens up it’s to the sight of his sister grinning at him, face flushed and eyes bright. It hits him all over again just how much she’s aged over the past ten years—all those Skype calls and selfies sent over LINE while he was away in Argentina never quite managed to capture the signs of aging that are stark on her face now that he’s looking right at her: the laugh lines around her mouth, the slightest hint of crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes. But she still looks just like how he remembers her, at age 15, 20, 25. Her hair might be shorter now, and she isn’t the skinny teenager she used to be anymore, but her smile is still exactly the same. She still looks just like him.

They were never really all that close, since she’s so much older than Tooru, but the sight of her face still brings back good memories from childhood. Tooru didn’t even realize just how much he missed her until now.

“So you finally decide to come home, huh?” she teases. “Having too much fun in Tokyo with your precious Iwa-chan?”

Tooru scowls. “If I’d known you’d be like this I would’ve just stayed there.”

His sister lets out a sharp peal of laughter. “Aw, you used to be such a cute little kid. What happened?”

“I’m 31 years old!” Tooru protests. “You’re not allowed to make fun of me like that!”

“Nah,” she says, and reaches out to ruffle Tooru’s hair again. “You’ll always be my baby brother.”

It’s then that their father breaks up their argument, ever the peacemaker to the other combative personalities of the Oikawa family, and then of course he has to hug it out with Tooru too. After that Tooru does his rounds with the other members of the household, saying hi to his brother-in-law (whom Tooru truthfully doesn’t know all that well but is a nice enough guy), and then to Takeru, who is stiff and overly formal to Tooru, which is honestly hilarious considering how much of a brat he used to be back when he was in elementary school. He doesn’t get to talk to Takeru for long because his mother soon pulls him away to help her with the cooking, and Tooru ends up spending the rest of the time before dinner just idly watching some bizarre reality TV show with his sister and father.

Truthfully, something this would’ve never happened even when Tooru was still living back home in Miyagi: his sister left home when she got married, for one, and Tooru never actually lived with her for all that long. For most of his teenage years he was an only child for all intents and purposes. But even aside from that, he was always too busy to really get to spend time with his family like this—just sitting around, watching dumb TV, not really talking about anything in particular. Growing up Tooru was always busy: with school, with dates, with volleyball most of all. Well, Tooru doesn’t have any of things anymore, but here, sitting on his couch, wedged between his father’s reticent stoniness and his sister’s occasional snorts of laughter, he finds that maybe idleness isn’t so bad after all.

“Dinner’s ready!” his mother calls, and then his dad turns off the TV before they can find out the winner of the reality TV episode, which leaves Tooru feeling strangely unfulfilled. He goes to help his mom take the dishes out to the dining table to distract himself, and suddenly he thinks about dinnertime in a different city, with a different person: he’s thinking about dinners with Iwa-chan, their well-practiced routine, the pots and pans they ordered online together, the dishware they got as a gift from Iwa-chan’s parents. Watching TV together on the weekends too, and having dumb arguments about nothing at all.

Well, Iwa-chan isn’t here now, even though Tooru’s mom explicitly told them that Iwa-chan was more than welcome to join them for dinner, so that’s on him. Stupid, stupid Iwa-chan.

Even without Iwa-chan though, dinner is still good. It’s all of Tooru’s favorite dishes specially prepared by his mom—all the foods he craved so badly the first few months he moved to Argentina—plus the empanadas he baked yesterday reheated and arranged carefully on a decorative plate.

Over dinner Tooru fields the question he expects: how is Tokyo? How is the house? How is Hajime-kun? Are you eating well? Are you taking care of yourself? Do you miss Argentina? He gets to talk a lot about Argentina, mostly for the benefit of his brother-in-law and Takeru, because his parents and his sister have heard every single one of his stories by now but they haven’t. He gets to talk about the San Juan team, and how much he misses Buenos Aires, and what it was like training for the Olympics. He talks about teaching himself how to speak Spanish. The kindness of strangers who let him stutter through stilted conversations, missing half his words. Spending long hours at the gym, pushing himself to hit harder, jump higher, run faster, desperate to prove his worth.

Sometimes Tooru forgets the sheer magnitude of his achievements, but in the face of his brother-in-law’s impressed nods and Takeru’s starry-eyed gaze, in the face of his mom patting him on the hand and saying, “We’re very proud of you, Tooru-kun,” it suddenly occurs to him all over again. He really did that. He really did achieve all his dreams and then some.

But then Takeru asks, “But why did you retire? You could’ve still kept on playing, right?” and Tooru accidentally drops his chopsticks onto the floor.

He bends over quickly to pick it up, which is opportune because it gives him the perfect excuse to hide his face from sight, for just a moment. He doesn’t know what kind of expression crosses his face in that instant, but he doesn’t care to find out. Or to let anyone else see it either.

When he straightens back up he has his usual charming smile plastered on his face again.

“I’ll go get a new pair,” he says, and then withdraws to the kitchen.

* * *

All things considered, it wasn’t even that dramatic. Tooru knew that all his doctors knew that his knee was fucked, that it was only a matter of time—that regular PT and ice baths and acupuncture sessions were only delaying the inevitable. That one day, if Tooru insisted on continuing to play volleyball, his knee would finally give out on him and that would be it, there would be no going back. So if anything, he’s lucky he managed to hold out for long enough to finally fulfil every single worthless promise he’s ever made throughout his entire life—that his dreams really had come true, in the end. But the thing that nobody tells you about is what happens after your dreams come true. Because in all those kaiju movies that Iwa-chan loves so much, after the heroes finally kill the monster and the romantic leads get to kiss, nobody ever talks about the day after. And the day after that. And after that. And after that, over and over again. So, yes, Tooru did make it to the Olympics, and he did defeat every single rival he’s had since middle school, and he did help Argentina clinch its first gold in men’s volleyball in history, but so what? Now here he is, on the wrong side of thirty, lost and confused in a way he’s never been in his entire life. Sure, retiring at thirty is pretty standard for any pro athlete, but the truth is that Tooru’s never actually thought seriously about what would happen to him when that day finally came. Who is he if he doesn’t have volleyball? He doesn’t have an answer. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever have an answer.

* * *

Dinner proceeds in pretty normal fashion after that. By the time Tooru gets back to the table the conversation has moved on to Takeru’s college classes and his post-graduation plans, and between his obvious discomfort and the way Tooru’s sister stares at him the whole time like a hawk eyeing its next prey, nobody even remembers to ask Tooru about his retirement again. But Tooru remembers, and he spends the rest of dinner feeling like there’s a stone in the bottom of the stomach. Suddenly he isn’t so hungry anymore.

He tries to help out with the washing up after dinner but his sister shoos him out of the kitchen. “Go hang out with mom,” she orders, flicking a dish towel at his face when he protests, and so he obediently returns to the living room to go watch even more TV. His mom’s watching some soap opera, and when Tooru still has absolutely no clue what’s going on after ten minutes of trying to figure out the plot of the show he takes off to watch his dad and brother-in-law play shogi instead. Unfortunately, shogi is actually the most boring game in the world, so Tooru excuses himself yet again, this time to go sit in the backyard and breathe in the cool night air for a bit.

But when he slides the door open to the backyard, Takeru’s already there, sitting on the back porch, staring idly into space. He turns around at the sound of the door opening, and when he sees Tooru standing there, he startles so badly he nearly jumps a foot into the air.

“Relax,” Tooru says, sliding the door behind him. “It’s just me.”

He walks over to Takeru and lowers himself down, sitting right next to him. Their garden is small, but it’s well-manicured as always. Good to know his mother’s green thumb still persists. The night breeze is cool against his face; distantly, he can hear the trill of cicadas. It’s a nostalgic sound. It makes him think about idyllic summers spent with Iwa-chan. Catching stag beetles. Garigari-kun ice pops. Scraped knees and bruised elbows. Picking up a volleyball for the first time. It feels like an entire lifetime ago, now.

“Sorry,” Takeru mumbles, so quietly that Tooru almost misses it. When he turns to look at Takeru he realizes Takeru’s face is red. He’s staring resolutely down at his feet, not meeting Tooru’s eyes.

“Huh?” Tooru asks. “What for?”

There’s a brief pause. “Over dinner,” Takeru finally says. “When I asked about why you retired. I saw your face for a second.”

“Oh,” Tooru says. Now he’s the one who can’t quite look Takeru in the eye. “That was nothing.”

“It was your knee, wasn’t it?” Takeru asks. Tooru sucks in a breath, an unintentional reflex. “I remember grandma talking about it a while ago.”

Tooru’s silent for a long time, trying to figure out how to answer Takeru’s question.

“I mean,” Takeru cuts in, “you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“No, it’s okay.” Tooru rubs his right knee absently. “I dislocated my knee playing volleyball when I was in middle school,” he says. “It never really healed right. If I took care of it properly it didn’t really bother me, but when you play volleyball competitively for over ten years… I mean, it takes a toll on your body.”

Takeru won’t stop staring at Tooru’s knee, like he’s expecting something to sprout from it any second now.

“I’m perfectly fine, by the way,” Tooru tell him. “I can still go running and hiking and all that. But if I kept playing competitively… well. Let’s just say it would’ve been like a ticking time bomb.”

Takeru doesn’t say anything to that, so Tooru remains quiet too, just letting silence fill the space between them.

Finally Tooru says, “By the way, I forgot to ask you earlier. You’re not planning on going pro anymore?”

Takeru cuts a glance at Tooru, and then looks back down.

“That was just a dumb high school dream,” he says, smiling wryly. “I’m not actually good enough to be a pro volleyball player.”

“Hey!” Tooru says it so loudly that Takeru actually startles. “That’s not true! I’ve seen you play, you know.”

Takeru laughs. “Thanks, Uncle Tooru.”

“It’s true,” Tooru insists. “I mean, you learned from the best after all.”

Takeru grins back at him. “Well, maybe I shouldn’t have it put that way,” he says, and then his smile shifts into something more wistful, more contemplative. “It’s more like—I didn’t have the guts to stick it out as a pro athlete.”

“What do you mean?”

Tooru lets Takeru take his time before he answers. “I mean… it’s not easy, you know?” And Tooru nods, because he knows, boy does he know. “Nobody becomes a pro athlete unless they really, really love it. And I liked playing volleyball, but I didn’t love it the way you do, I guess.” Takeru shifts, leaning forward onto his elbows. “I remember watching you on TV when I was in high school and thinking—volleyball was your life, right? How do you love one thing so much that it feels like nothing else matters?”

“You can love other things too,” Tooru says quietly.

“I know.” Takeru straightens up, looking embarrassed. “Sorry. That got kind of dramatic at the end there.”

“It’s okay. You’re an Oikawa. Being dramatic is in your genes.”

Takeru snorts. “Yeah, when you and mom are in the same room it’s like…”

Tooru smirks back at him. “Some things never change, I guess.”

Silence descends on them again, but it’s more comfortable this time. Tooru just sits and listens to the cicadas, the distant sounds of their neighbors going about their lives.

“You know,” Takeru suddenly says. “I’ve been coaching at Lil Tykes Volleyball for the past few summers now.”

“Really?” Tooru’s eyes go wide, and then he laughs. “That old place is still there?”

“I mean, it’s kind of good business to say that an Olympic champion once coached there,” Takeru points out.

“Fair,” Tooru concedes, grinning. He leans back onto his palms. “Wow. That really takes me back.”

“I feel kind of bad for how much of a brat I used to be back then.” Takeru scratches his chin. “Those kids can be a nightmare sometimes.”

“Aw, but you were so cute back then, I didn’t mind,” Tooru coos, and Takeru scowls at him.

“You and mom,” he mutters. “Exactly the same.”

Tooru chuckles. “For real though,” he says. “I had fun coaching there. It was a good part-time job.”

Takeru’s expression softens. “I’m glad,” he replies. “I had fun there, too.”

And now Tooru’s thinking about Takeru at eight years old, his shaved head and gangly limbs. He thinks about all those other kids too, the ones who would squeal every time he walked into the gym, the quieter ones who trailed after him around the court, too shy to ask for his attention. He wonders where all those kids are now. If they’re around Takeru’s age they’re probably in college, or just starting their careers. He wonders if they still remember him. Maybe they brag about having known him. _Oikawa Tooru used to be my coach when I was kid._ He wonders how many of them continued to play volleyball, even as they grew older. If he had a part to play in any of that.

“Hey, Takeru,” Tooru says. “Why did you start playing volleyball in the first place?”

Takeru looks back at him, cocking his head to one side.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he says. “I started playing because of you.”

And Tooru feels it like a direct hit to his sternum.

“Oh,” he says, but his voice comes out sounding oddly strangled.

Takeru laughs. “You were a really lame uncle,” he says. “But I did look up to you a lot when I was a kid. I used to go to your matches, you know?”

“Everybody came to my matches,” Tooru says faintly.

Takeru just looks at him. “You still are a lame uncle,” he decides. “Even if you did go to the Olympics.”

“Such an un-cute nephew,” Tooru mutters, more from force of habit than anything else.

“Yeah, yeah.” Takeru cricks his neck, rolling his shoulders back. Then he pushes himself up to stand, and looks back down at Tooru. “By the way, you’re still gonna be here tomorrow, right?”

Tooru nods, not quite sure where this is going.

“Lil Tykes has class tomorrow,” Takeru says. “You should come by. Those kids would freak out, but they could a learn a lot from you.”

“Oh,” Tooru says, eyes widening. “I’ll think about it.”

Takeru smiles. “Great. Let me know.” And then he slides the door open and disappears back into the house.

Tooru stays on the back porch for a long while more. Listening to the cicadas. Thinking.

* * *

When Tooru finally peels himself off the back porch and comes back inside, it’s to discover that his sister baked a surprise birthday cake for him, which is incredible, and then his dad whips out a bottle of sake, which is even better. They end up spending the rest of the evening just sitting around the dining table, chatting, getting steadily drunker, until it gets late and they decide to retire for the night. Tooru gets put in the guest room, because his childhood bedroom doesn’t exist anymore now that the house has been renovated, and after taking a shower and changing into his PJs, he finds himself lying wide awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling.

Even though Tooru knows logically that he should be tired, he doesn’t feel sleepy at all. He tosses and turns in bed for what feels like hours, before he gives up and grabs his phone. He hasn’t really looked at it all day, now that he thinks about it. He pulls up all his social media feeds now, but the second he does he suddenly finds it hard to breathe.

He muted the notifications on all his social media accounts when the whole Iwa-chan photo drama went down, and then just never bothered to turn it back on again. Which is how he managed to miss the whole swarm of posts and comments and tagged photos that people have posted, all wishing him a happy birthday.

There are posts from old Seijou classmates and volleyball teammates. From his friends in Argentina. Ex-teammates from San Juan and the Olympic team. His next-door neighbor from when he lived in Buenos Aires. Coach Blanco. There are photos of him at a beach resort he remembers going to with his teammates for his 25th birthday on Instagram. Him at his favorite bar in all of Argentina, sipping on a margarita. Him at training, sweaty and exhausted but still grinning broadly at the camera.

And there’s an old Seijou team photo, posted by Kindaichi on Facebook. Tooru hasn’t looked at an old photo of himself in ages. Everyone looks so impossibly young. He looks at himself, that swoop of hair he used to spend way too long styling in the mornings. He looks at Makki’s bad haircut and Mattsun’s sloppy uniform. But he finds himself looking at Iwa-chan most of all, his spiky hair and unkempt eyebrows, the number four emblazoned on the front of his jersey. The way he gazes back at the camera with his arms crossed, standing straight and tall, looking like he’s on top of the entire world. Like the boy that Tooru first fell in love with, all those years ago.

And then his phone suddenly buzzes with a LINE message from Iwa-chan.

> **Iwaizumi Hajime [12:09AM]:** You awake? I can’t sleep

Tooru stares at the message for a long time, feeling his heart thud dully in his chest.

> **Oikawa Tooru [12:11AM]:** Can’t sleep either :(
> 
> **Iwaizumi Hajime [12:11AM]:** Wanna go for a walk?
> 
> **Oikawa Tooru [12:11AM]:** Sure
> 
> **Iwaizumi Hajime [12:11AM]:** Okay. I’ll meet you in front of your house in ten

* * *

When Tooru quietly cracks the front door open exactly ten minutes after Iwa-chan’s last text, he discovers that Iwa-chan’s already standing there, waiting.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi,” Tooru responds, and doesn’t know why he’s suddenly feeling shy all of a sudden.

“Where do you wanna go?” Iwa-chan asks.

“I don’t know,” Tooru says. “Anywhere.”

Iwa-chan smiles. “Okay,” he says. “Just pick a direction. We’ll walk.”

Tooru decides to head left, just for the hell of it, and so off they go. They actually end up passing by the Iwaizumi residence, just a block away, but Iwa-chan doesn’t seem to mind.

It’s eerily quiet. Even the cicadas have stopped by now. The streetlamps cast a soft orange glow over the sidewalk; it feels almost otherworldly, like an alternate universe just out of step with the real world. An alternate universe where Tooru finds himself oddly self-conscious next to Iwa-chan, tugging the ends of his sweater over his fingers, and quiet in a way he usually never is.

“How’s your family?” Iwa-chan asks, finally breaking the silence between them.

“Good,” Tooru says. He chances a glimpse at Iwa-chan, but he’s facing forward, not looking back at Tooru. “Takeru was there. Back home for the summer.”

“Ah. All grown up now, huh?”

“Yeah, he’s graduating from college next year.”

“Damn,” Iwa-chan says, laughing. “Really makes you feel old, huh?”

“Speak for yourself, Iwa-chan. I’m forever young at heart.”

“That’s exactly what an old person would say.”

“Iwa-chan!”

Tooru punches Iwa-chan on the shoulder, but Iwa-chan just grins back at him.

“I know,” Iwa-chan says. “We’re the same age, I’m a hypocrite.”

“Actually, you’re a month older than me.” Tooru turns his nose up. “Don’t you ever forget it.”

Iwa-chan snorts. “As if I could ever forget,” he says.

They keep walking.

“And what about you, Iwa-chan?” Tooru asks. “How are your parents?”

“Oh, they’re fine,” Iwa-chan says. “Still nagging at me about how I should visit them more often.”

Tooru chuckles. “I can almost hear that in your mom’s voice.”

“Yeah.” Iwa-chan cracks a smile. “Same as always.”

They keep walking. They pass by the shopping street, the Family Mart, the playground. It takes a while for Tooru to realize where they’re actually going.

“Wait,” he says. “This is the route to Seijou.”

Iwa-chan blinks. “Oh,” he says. “I didn’t even realize.”

But it’s true—Tooru recognizes the winding streets now, the turns that he made without even realizing it. He hasn’t walked this route in over a decade, but now that he’s here, feeling the ground beneath his feet, it feels like just yesterday that he was walking to school after dawn for morning practice, his best friend and vice-captain steadfastly by his side, complaining about homework and gossiping about classmates and talking about nothing in particular at all.

It doesn’t take long at all before they find themselves standing in front of the school gates. It’s dark, but Tooru can still make out the sign out front: _Aobajousai High School_.

“Takes you back, huh?” Iwa-chan says.

The reflexive comeback is on the tip of Tooru’s tongue. _You sound like an old man, Iwa-chan_. But he doesn’t say it. Instead he just runs his hand over the iron bars of the school gate and murmurs, “Yeah. It really does.”

“We had some good times together, didn’t we?” Iwa-chan says.

Tooru turns to him, and abruptly realizes that Iwa-chan has been looking back at him the whole time.

Tooru’s heart jumps up into his throat. All of a sudden it feels like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff, just an inch away from hurtling into free-fall.

“Do you think I should try and climb over the gate?” Tooru asks, with a tinge of desperation to his voice. Iwa-chan starts like he’s just been shocked.

“Huh?” His eyes go wide, and then refocus into a glare. “What the hell, Oikawa? What are you, twelve?”

“I wonder what the gym looks like now,” Tooru continues. “Maybe I can steal something just for fun.”

Iwa-chan snorts. “You should do it, just so I can see what all the tabloids say about it tomorrow. _Ex-Olympian Oikawa Tooru arrested for breaking into his former high school and stealing a volleyball._ ”

“Excuse me!” Tooru squawks. “If I’m going to steal anything it’s going to be way more valuable than a dumb volleyball.”

Iwa-chan laughs, and just like that, the spell is broken.

“We should head back,” he says, still smiling. “It’s getting late.”

“Yeah,” Tooru says. “Let’s go home.”

They keep walking. Tooru decides to take a different route back, see some different sights. Maybe secretly to prolong the amount of time he gets to spend with Iwa-chan like this, in the dead of night, with no one else watching. Surprisingly, Iwa-chan agrees, so instead of going back the way they came they take a longer route instead, cutting through narrow side streets and alleyways. In spite of Tooru’s claims about taking the scenic route there really is nothing to see along this path, just houses that look exactly the same and the occasional stray cat running away from them. That is, until they walk past a playground, and Tooru’s eyes light up.

“Hey!” he says, bounding up to it. “We used to come here all the time when we were kids, remember?”

It looks just as Tooru remembers: the monkey bars, the sand pit, the slide that Tooru somehow managed to sprain his ankle on when he was five. And the swings at the back too, Tooru’s favorite back when he was younger. He remembers loving the feeling of being in the air, of trying to push himself to go as high as he possibly could. He clambers over to the swing set now and sits down. It’s smaller than he remembers—definitely not built to withstand an adult man—but it still makes him feel suddenly nostalgic.

“C’mon,” Tooru says, patting the empty swing next to him. “Sit with me for a bit.”

For a moment Iwa-chan looks like he wants to argue, but Tooru can see on his face the exact moment when he decides to give in.

“Fine,” he sighs, and then sits right down next to Tooru obediently. The swing creaks dangerously under his weight, and Tooru laughs.

“Careful, don’t break it,” he warns.

“Look who’s talking,” Iwa-chan retorts.

It’s so dark here. The streetlamps that illuminate the playground area are dim enough that it’s a little hard for Tooru to make out Iwa-chan’s face. But it’s calm too, somehow. There are stars in the sky, just a handful, but more than Tooru’s ever been able to see in Tokyo. Out here, where it’s just far removed enough from the city for the sky to be clear and calm, Tooru feels more at peace with himself than he’s ever been, not since he was eighteen years old and flush with excitement at the promise of his own future.

“Any plans for tomorrow?” Iwa-chan asks.

“Oh,” Tooru says, digging his heels into the ground. “So Takeru’s been coaching at Lil Tykes too, apparently, and he invited me to go visit them tomorrow.”

“Are you gonna go?” Iwa-chan asks, looking surprised.

Tooru shrugs. “Maybe. I’m still considering it.”

“Will you be okay, though? Being seen in public?”

Tooru looks up at the sky. “Honestly, Iwa-chan? I’m too tired to even care about that now. What, I can’t even go visit my nephew’s summer job in my hometown now?”

“That’s not what I said,” Iwa-chan says evenly. “It’s just that—I mean, it hasn’t been that long since—”

“I don’t care!” Tooru snaps, voice rising abruptly. “I’m so sick of having my life be controlled by what other people think! I haven’t been able to live like a regular fucking human being for years and years now, Iwa-chan, and of course you have no clue what it’s like, mister ‘ _relax, it’s all going to blow over, why are you freaking out on me_ —’”

“Then help me understand,” Iwa-chan interrupts, and even in the dark his earnest, determined face is still clear as day to Tooru.

“It’s like—” Tooru starts, and then stops.

Because the thing is, Tooru had honestly enjoyed the fame at first. Relished in it, even. It was exhilarating, being young and at the peak of his career and having the eyes of the whole world focused on him. He was good at the interviews, the press junkets, the late night TV shows. He felt powerful. He felt seen. He felt worthy. But then he retired, and suddenly all of that media attention turned sour overnight like a jar of milk left out on the counter, like a fruit with its skin split open, revealing its rotten core underneath. Suddenly all anyone ever wanted from him was the answers to questions he hadn’t even begun to ask himself yet: what are you going to do with your life? What can you do that isn’t play volleyball? What next? What now? And suddenly Tooru didn’t feel powerful, or seen, or worthy anymore. Mostly he just felt like a circus sideshow freak, an oddity of days gone by. Like his life was over even though it had barely even begun.

But he doesn’t know how to say any of things to Iwa-chan, so what he says instead is, “I didn’t actually care about being famous. I just wanted to play volleyball.” He inhales sharply, then exhales, letting all the air in his lungs leave him in a rush. “That’s all I ever wanted,” he admits.

That’s not entirety true, though. Tooru has wanted—still wants—other things. Attention, and care, and new sneakers, and empanadas from the bakery next to his old apartment in Buenos Aires, and milk bread from the neighborhood grocery store in Miyagi, and to feel like himself again, and Iwa-chan, most of all, for as long as he can possibly remember. Because the truth is this: as much as he tells people that his first love is volleyball, he knows that’s not true, because volleyball has always been second to his first true love—Iwaizumi Hajime, the boy next door and his best-kept secret, carefully concealed in the deepest depths of his heart even after all this time.

He doesn’t, can’t say any of those things out loud. And yet somehow, Iwa-chan looks back at him like he understands perfectly, like he’s understood all of Tooru’s most secret feelings all along.

“Did you ever regret,” Iwa-chan says, his eyes never leaving Tooru’s face once, “going to Argentina?”

“Never.” Tooru shakes his head. “Not once. Not even when we—” and then shuts up immediately, because what he was just about to say was _not even when we broke up._

 _Ah shit,_ Tooru thinks mournfully. _I was doing such a good job not bringing it up, too._

But Iwa-chan doesn’t say anything. He just looks at Tooru for a long, long time.

It’s that knife’s edge feeling from earlier all over again, from when they stood in front of Seijou’s front gates and Iwa-chan looked at Tooru in a way that he’s never looked at Tooru before. But that’s not actually true, is it? Iwa-chan’s looked at him like this plenty of times, Tooru suddenly realizes. Iwa-chan’s never once stopped looking at him like this: like Tooru’s his whole world, like he never wants to look away ever again.

“Iwa-chan?” Tooru whispers, eyes wide.

“If we’re making confessions, here’s one thing I never told you,” Iwa-chan says, voice hushed like he’s telling a secret. “After we broke up, I spent a long time trying to understand why you were so mad at me, and after a long time I finally figured it out.” Iwa-chan’s smiling now, but it’s a wistful smile. It’s the smile of someone who’s been holding himself back for a long, long time. “You thought I wouldn’t miss you, right? You thought I should’ve fought harder for you to stay.” Iwa-chan sighs, finally dropping his gaze from Tooru’s face. “I should’ve told you. The last thing I wanted to do then—that I want to do now—was to ever get in the way of your dreams.”

Tooru experiences the peculiar sensation of feeling his heart break all over again, but this time in slow-motion. Like he can feel it crack open in his chest, bleeding out everywhere, all over his insides.

“The truth is that I was upset. Of course I was upset. I’d never been away from you for longer than a week in my entire life,” Iwa-chan continues. “But I didn’t want to—I couldn’t hold you back. I didn’t want you to feel guilty about leaving, so I had act like it didn’t bother me.” He turns back to Tooru now, eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiles. “I didn’t think it would backfire like that. Sorry.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Tooru asks, and the voice that comes out of his throat is barely recognizable, raw and rough and brittle.

“I didn’t want to be a burden to you, Oikawa. I didn’t you to have to worry about me,” Iwa-chan says, so calm and measured that Tooru wants to scream. He doesn’t understand how Iwa-chan can possibly be so level-headed right now—but then he thinks about the past month, Iwa-chan’s unflappable coolness even when it seemed like Tooru’s entire carefully-constructed world was crashing down at his feet, even when Tooru dragged Iwa-chan into a mess that wasn’t even his to begin with, and something finally clicks in Tooru’s brain.

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, “you were doing all that for me?”

“I mean,” Iwa-chan says, rubbing the back of his neck, “when you put it that way, yeah, I guess so.”

Tooru doesn’t say anything—feels incapable of speech right now. His heart is beating so loudly he can hear it in his own ears. It sounds like a hurricane closing in on him, swallowing him up, making it impossible to breathe.

“But we broke up,” Tooru manages to say, even though it feels like his throat’s closing up on him. “We didn’t talk for a whole year.”

“I never wanted to break up with you,” Iwa-chan tells him, so matter-of-fact in spite of everything. Like it’s been obvious this entire damn time. And maybe it has. Maybe Tooru just wasn’t looking in the right places. “I wanted us to stay together.”

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru says. There’s so much he wants to say. He wants to say _me too_ and _why didn’t you ever tell me_ and _you should’ve said this ten whole years ago_. But he doesn’t say any of those things. What he says instead is, “You’re so fucking stupid,” and then grabs the chain of Iwa-chan’s swing, drags him closer, and kisses him, just like how he’s always wanted to, ever since the first time he looked over at Iwa-chan’s grinning face in high school and thought, _you’re it for me. There’s no one else but you._ That fact hasn’t changed one bit, not through multiple decades and continents and homes. Tooru doesn’t know a lot, but he knows one unshakeable truth: that Iwa-chan is his, and he’s Iwa-chan’s, and nothing and no one will ever change that. Iwa-chan’s lips are soft, and his hand is astonishingly warm when he strokes his thumb across Tooru’s cheek, and Tooru closes his eyes and finally, for the first time in a long, long while, feels completely and utterly at peace.

* * *

Tomorrow, he’ll show up at Lil Tykes with Iwa-chan’s hand firmly in his, and he’ll smile cheerily in the face of Takeru’s disbelieving expression and multiple cameras going off right in front of him. He’ll take selfies with overexcited parents and make the kids call him Coach Oikawa, and he’ll show them how to do a jump serve and tell them about what it’s like to train for the Olympics. He’ll tell them that it’s hard, that the road to success will be painful sometimes, but it’ll all be worth it in the end as long as you never give up on what you love. That he’s certainly never giving up on volleyball either. And the whole time, he’ll be looking at Iwa-chan, who’ll be looking right back at him too.

Tomorrow, he’ll figure out what he wants to do for the rest of his life. For now, it’s enough to stay by Iwa-chan’s side. Everything else can wait.


End file.
